Without history we tend to consider the status quo normal, and other possibilities anomalous. But the original proponents of today's status quo on US streets called their own position "radical," and the status quo we live with every day was their far-fetched, radical aspiration.
It’s Been 100 Years Since Cars Drove Pedestrians Off The Roads.
Facing shocking numbers of killed pedestrians in 1922, E.J.Mehren stated that “the obvious solution lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for.”
Disastrous US pedestrian safety trends are due in part to vehicle design. Massive vehicles with high front ends have vast blind spots. We have been here before. Long front ends have also limited drivers’ views. In 1941 automotive engineer Arthur Stevens proposed this redesign.
We have a climate emergency. What does emergency response look like? In 1942, in response to an emergency, gasoline was rationed in the US; most drivers were limited to 3 gallons per week. Here we see parking for workers at the Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica.
"Children have a right to play in the streets unattended." Citing established precedent, so argued lawyers Nathan Porter and Samuel Holladay before the California Supreme Court in January, 1871. They were representing the father of John Schierhold, age 7. The Court agreed.
On this date in 1926, pedestrians met at the St Louis Public Library on Olive Street to found the Pedestrians Union. The founders agreed that automobiles should be incapable of exceeding 15 mph.
(St Louis Post-Dispatch)
“The children don’t walk. They run. This is how they relate to their environment, and it’s in this way that their bodies and minds grow. A fundamental freedom that adults have to limit every day - ‘be careful!’ - because we’ve redesigned cities to drive through, not to live in.”
Los niños no caminan. Corren. Es así que se relacionan con su entorno y es de esta manera que se desarrollan su cuerpo y su mente. Una libertad fundamental que los adultos tienen que limitar cada día - “tené cuidado! - porque hemos diseñado la ciudad para manejar, no para vivir.
By far the most common explanation of car dependency in the US is mass preference. Yet in US cities 100 years ago a small minority of drivers degraded the majority’s preferred transport modes, making them much less useful and contributing to their demise.
(data: Atlanta, 1923)
Congestion-free driving is always just another lane away. In 1946 Atlanta promised that its "attractive" 6-lane "Downtown Connector" would never need widening. Segments now have 16 lanes.
(Image credits in comments.)
In 1942, in a past emergency, the bicycle’s many advantages – including its economical use of steel – made it “an essential industry.” Production of 1 ton of steel emits about about 1.5 tons of CO2. In today's emergency, cycling can do far more for us than heavy, 4-wheeled BEVs.
Departments of transportation “prefer to ignore history, and hope that this time a new road will reduce travel time and not increase trip making. There is no basis for such a hope.”
— Engineer Robert L. Morris, P.E., in a report to the city of Durham, North Carolina (1979).
"Helsingin kaupunki on laskenut, että yhden euron investointi laadukkaisiin, baana-tasoisiin pyöräväyliin tuo kahdeksan euron hyödyt."
Pyöräväylät eivät ole kulu vaan sijoitus. Kuntien olisi hyvä muistaa tämä budjetteja laatiessaan.
Lainaus on Pyöräilyn ilo -kirjasta.
The technofuturists would have us believe that innovation is their monopoly and lies always just over the next horizon. But we already have everything we need. Our biggest obstacle is not technology, but the technofuturists' distractions.
From Autonorama, p. 21:
In 1928 Nelson Alley of Indianapolis wrote a forecast that has so far proved accurate on multiple points. Yet Alley failed to predict that his neighborhood would be erased, or that at the site of his home at 108 N. Delaware Street there would be a 5-level parking garage.
Press reporting habits such as “car hits pedestrian” have been controversial for a long time – and in its driver education material, even the American Automobile Association objected.
(AAA, 1955)
To sell more cars, the Nat'l Auto Dealers Assn wanted more roads and parking. So it wrote scripts for local broadcasters to read on air as news. They included scripted statements that were to be attributed to a local auto dealer speaking as a concerned citizen.
(NADA, June 1952)
*100 years* On June 12, 1922, a city dedicated a monument: “Erected by the Citizens of Baltimore in Memory of 130 Children Whose Lives Were Sacrificed by Accident during the Year 1921.” It was a defense of children's right to the safe use of their local streets.
#FightingTraffic
The position that most road injuries and deaths are due to human error is controversial. But I do hold this position. The lethal error was the human decision to prioritize fast driving over all other forms of surface transport. That was a human error. And it continues.
Because “jay” was a term of abuse, many pedestrians took offense at the term “jay walker.” Some recognized the epithet as a strategy to shift the balance of power in streets in motorists’ favor. Objections like this one, from 1920, were common.
I’ve stopped believing in the “share the road” slogan for quite a while now. I learned about this when I started cycling as everyday transport and I thought, as many did, that it makes sense in an ideal setting. But Metro Manila streets are far from ideal.
"The obvious solution ... lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for." Edward Mehren, engineer, roadbuilder, and highway advocate, wrote these words in an editorial that ran 100 years ago tomorrow, on November 9, 1922.
Responding to his proposal, people frequently told Stevens that the redesign wouldn’t work because it would reduce vehicles’ “sales appeal.”
This was Stevens’ reply:
When parents demanded streets safe for children, motordom trained children to defer to motorists. This poster was distributed by the Chicago Motor Club to thousands of classrooms in 1930 and 1931. A letter accompanying the poster asked teachers to follow the ritual depicted.
Superciclovía:
On Sunday, March 19, 1972, for a few hours, the US had the most lavish bike superhighway in the world. Ahead of the opening of a new 7-mile segment of I-805 at San Diego, cyclists had it all to themselves.
photo: Robert Hancock, via Dan Hancock & Mike McPhate
Before there were jaywalkers there were jay drivers. The term emerged c. 1900 in Kansas City to ridicule wagoners who drove their teams in a manner that obstructed other street users, including pedestrians and streetcar passengers. This illustration is from 1904.
Drivers making wide turns go faster and may approach pedestrians almost from behind. Four days ago in San Francisco, a four-year-old girl was killed this way. Her father was gravely injured. In the US, even in dense street grids, such turns are usually legal.
It wasn't always so.
A century ago, officialdom often opposed plans to regulate pedestrians. In 1919, when New York City considered such an ordinance, Bruce Cobb, the magistrate of the city’s traffic court, warned that it would tend to give drivers “a sense of proprietorship” of the streets.
Is a speed governor ordinance on your November ballot? Exactly 100 years ago such an initiative was on the ballot in Cincinnati, after 42,000 residents signed petitions demanding a law that would mechanically limit motor vehicles to a top speed of 25 mph. This is a "vote yes" ad.
In academic programs in transportation fields, students seldom study the history of their work. Yet the legacies of historical mobility injustice are everywhere, and neglect of history conceals and perpetuates them. In 1916, $1.75 (roughly $50 today) was a good day’s wage.
Over 80 years ago we already knew that where driving speeds are lower and people can walk freely, walking is more practical, more common, and much safer.
Roy Elliott reporting in the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, Feb. 20, 1940:
The “jay” that survives today only in “jaywalker” emerged as a term of abuse in the midwestern US, c. 1880. “Jay driver” is older than “jay walker”; it applied to a rural person who drives a horse-drawn wagon in town in ways that were a nuisance to others – including pedestrians.
Misleading versions of the past are obstacles to the future we need. Car dependency was not the democratic choice. So our problem is not somehow to make car dependency finally work. Getting the future right begins with getting the past right.
from Autonorama, page 205:
“We who are walking are people too.”
The people who wrote up rules to restrict pedestrians did not ask pedestrians why they walk as they do. Mary Armstrong told them anyway.
Traffic deaths. In the US, about 43000 in 2022. When we quantify the loss, we depersonalize it. When we personalize the loss, we lose sight of the scale. In 1935 the Chicago Tribune quantified and personalized the toll in Cook County (780 killed) through this 2-page photo spread.
Congestion-free driving is always just another lane away, Atlanta edition: three views of the Downtown Connector.
credits: Lochner plan, 1946 / J.C. Lee, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 1969; Georgia State Univ Archives / Jonathan Phillips, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2015.
NW Indiana, 1970: “Some ... drivers were angry that bicyclists Jeanette Gonda (left), Diane Kaminsky, Therese Drapach, Elaine Rybicki and Diane Hlebasko were on the road. The next day [they] added signs to their vehicles to show bikes don’t create the nuisance, automobiles do.”
Before anyone was ever called a jaywalker, a “jay” was a driver who who menaced people walking or cycling.
Kansas City Star, editorial (excerpt), Sep. 21, 1905.
Listen to Charles:
- In 2009
@clmarohn
of
@StrongTowns
exposed the burdens of the Growth Ponzi Scheme.
- In 1944 Charles Gordon had warned us of the "staggering tax burden" in advance: "We may find too late that we have merely expedited the process of destroying our cities."
“Jay walker” began to enter US English in 1905. By then, “jay driver,” “jay bicyclist,” and “jay automobilist” were already in circulation. All three were regarded as nuisances, especially to pedestrians and streetcar passengers.
Lawrence (Kansas) Daily World, March 21, 1907.
Astonishingly, the response was *not* “Keep driving while we spend billions subsidizing companies that are developing speculative technologies that they promise will be really, really, amazing.”
Philadelphia, October 6, 1927:
In the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, mothers of children who had been killed in traffic in the city's streets met to establish the Mothers Safety Council. They asked "What price speed?"
Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct 7, 1927; Fighting Traffic, pp. 29-30.
Reports vary widely, but a century ago a pedestrian accused of “jay walking” was likely to be a woman. Among motorists, however, about 9/10 were men. Restrictions of walking were disproportionately promoted and enforced by men, and impaired women’s mobility much more than men’s.
In the Netherlands, bikes are integrated into the public transport system. Public transport bikes (OV-fiets) make buses, trams and trains more practical, and make car parking at stations a fringe luxury, irrelevant to most travelers. Research by Jan Ploeger and Ruth Oldenziel.
In the US in the 1920s, proposals to protect pedestrians and children in streets led others to organize to shift responsibility for safety to pedestrians, including children. The “Twelve Commandments of Safety” (1925) taught children “the street is for autos.”
How do we make the traffic toll visible? In 1937 over 1,100 people in or near Chicago were killed in traffic – three people every day. To make the loss visible, the Chicago Herald & Examiner got permission to use of a half mile stretch of Grant Park. One cross for each death.
Thank you to so many people for coming out to grieve the loss of a child & demand City leaders do more to keep all of us safe.
Please take 1 minute to send an email at to echo our call for 3 key actions the City must take NOW to fix deadly intersections.
In the Netherlands, bikes are integrated into the public transport system. Buses, trams and trains are therefore much more practical. It’s not a visionary CEO's concept but a public service and a daily mass practice. How did the Netherlands do it? See the link in the thread.
"Organized"? "Militant"? Have we forgotten that it was organized, militant motorists who bequeathed us the status quo? Have we forgotten that in 1922 they announced that "the obvious solution ... lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for"?
Militant? 55 people have been killed in traffic crashes so far this year on Denver's streets. How many more people should be injured and killed in the name of motorists' rights?
Today is World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.
Worldwide, 1.35 million die on streets and roads each year.
This was the Chicago Tribune’s method of personalizing for its readers of the scale of the loss for 1935 in Cook County (1935 population: 4 million).
Traffic deaths. In the US, about 43000 in 2022. When we quantify the loss, we depersonalize it. When we personalize the loss, we lose sight of the scale. In 1935 the Chicago Tribune quantified and personalized the toll in Cook County (780 killed) through this 2-page photo spread.
Most of the people who were killed while walking were men or boys, but pedestrian regulation was often framed as a problem of controlling women. This 1922 article also asserts that “women with children are the worst offenders, and the woman who walks has no respect for the law.”
In 1923 "traffic safety" did not mean keeping children away from streets. It meant streets safe for children.
"Responsible parenting" did not mean chauffeuring children strapped into the right child car seat. It meant teaching children to negotiate streets safely on their own.
On May 29, 1867, John Schierhold, 7 years old, was playing with two friends on Powell Street in San Francisco. He was trampled to death under the horses of an omnibus. Schierhold’s father sued the company. The company argued it was not liable. In an appeal, the Court disagreed.
@bettybarc0de
In Autonorama (p. 7) I propose "menacing road users" (MRUs). I prefer "menacing" because it connotes not just dangerous, but dangerous above all to others.
When you try to move 20 pounds of vehicle for every pound of passenger, the efficiency limits are brutal.
> $10,000 of electronics plus "Remote Assistance Operations" don't change that.
Cruise calls $1/mile the “magic threshold” where robotaxis become cheaper than owning a car.
Wait til they discover how much it costs to take transit or ride a bike
Data don't drive. In the beginning is the agenda; the data follow. Drivers cause each other "delay." Instead of charging them for it as a loss drivers cause others, we charge society for it as a loss they endure. And so we pave everything in pursuit of an ever-receding horizon.
One of the many insights I gained from reading
@PeterNorton12
’s work, is how preventing or minimizing motorist “delay” became the primary goal of the traffic engineering profession, and how engineers used ostensibly neutral metrics to subsume every other competing value.
We must do better. We have normalized dysfunction. "Our streets" are "the most public spaces in our community," yet we've surrendered them to menacing, privatized invaders. In our own communities we are left navigating the fringes, like fugitives evading an authoritarian power.
Why I'm feeling down today, a 🧵: Yesterday, I saw a driver hit a woman on a bike just a couple blocks from my home. The bicyclist was transported to the hospital with injuries that are hopefully not life threatening but surely will cause lasting trauma. /1
This is jaywalking in 1906. In this sidewalk diagram, the jaywalker turning left cuts a corner, colliding with another pedestrian.
Several years later, auto clubs and their allies redefined jaywalking to deter walking in streets and to shift blame for pedestrian casualties.
100 years ago: On Nov 6, 1923, Cincinnati voters faced a ballot initiative for mandatory speed governors on all motor vehicles in the city. Ahead of the vote, auto dealers organized a coalition to defeat "the most vicious ordinance any community has ever been asked to vote upon."
Speaking of making the traffic death toll (in)visible: In 1929 Ohio Governor Myers Cooper, a member of the Cincinnati Automobile Club, ended his predecessor's practice of marking the sites of fatal road collisions. The markers were too depressing.
Ahead of the explanations about why "walker" is preferable to "pedestrian": in general I agree, but I want the specific connotation of "walking in traffic" (as opposed to "walking through the doorway") that "pedestrian" bears.
Between 1910 and 1915 the predominant definition of a “jay walker” changed from a person who gets in other pedestrians’ way to a person who gets in motorists’ way. In publicity campaigns, auto clubs led the change. Most clubs were subtler than the one in Tacoma, Washington.
When we need affordable housing, legalized proximity, bike lanes, bus shelters, and better transit, we find instead a planed "Detroit-to-Ann Arbor self-driving vehicle corridor." To excuse such absurdities, corporate releases are media-laundered as "news" (here via Detroit News).
That urban highway projects in the US disproportionately dislocated Black, brown, and low-income people is well known. Less known is that most of the non-construction costs were shifted to the dislocated residents. In 1968 economist Anthony Downs calculated the cost shifting.
For a century, companies have sold us impossible futures. As we pursue them they recede before us, as the horizon recedes. To the companies this is good, because the sales opportunity is in the journey, not the destination.
#Autonorama
is the third retread of Futurama.
Deterring pedestrians from walking in streets took imagination. Techniques that ridiculed or embarrassed walkers were early favorites. In Dec. 1913, in Syracuse NY, a safety committee that amply represented the local auto club hired a man in a Santa suit to shout at jaywalkers.
I just had 2 sweet EV rides in 2 days. For one I often didn't need any power – and when I did, >half the battery was moving my mass. The other EV didn't need batteries; it drew power on the go. But if we limit the word "EV" to the thing in the middle, we can sell a lot more cars.
@Mark_CN909
To oversimplify, see the pinned tweet on my profile: "The obvious solution ... lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for." This goal, stated in 1922, was largely achieved. It was the precondition of car dependency.
On Father's Day, remember Frank Derby (center foreground). In 1958 Derby lived in Pacoima, in Southern California's San Fernando Valley. It was a rapidly growing area with wide roads, few sidewalks, and fast driving. ...
"The cause is too few people traveling in too many vehicles."
— Twin City Lines (Minneapolis - St. Paul), 1945
(Minneapolis Star-Journal, May 12, 1945)
Over the decades when pedestrians’ access to streets was curtailed for drivers’ convenience, most drivers were men. Households with a car typically had only one, and a man was likely to monopolize it. Only 40% of US women had a driver’s license. Women’s mobility was impaired.
How did we get “a transport system that’s hostile to some of the most sustainable, affordable, inclusive and healthful modes of mobility, including walking and cycling”? How do we recover commonsense transport?
In conversation with
@ratnaamin
:
January 6: Tomorrow marks the 109th anniversary of Cincinnati’s first marked crosswalks, painted by the local automobile club. Detroit had led the way, introducing the such “safety lanes” seven months earlier. Crosswalks implicitly questioned pedestrians’ right to the street.
Extraordinary urbanists 2: A closer look at Rev. Mozel Sanders. In 1966 Sanders explained the obvious to people who should have known better. There must be "Homes Before Highways." In 2023 the USA still puts highways before homes.